Please, Tell Me I'm Alive!

On November 28, they loaded me and my oxygen and IV tubes into a wheelchair and rolled me to the rehab gym – the first time I was out of a hospital room for 25 days. What a very, very strange experience.

First, any change of head position gave me total vertigo. (Oddly, I came to enjoy this sensation of ass-over-ears dizziness. And why not? People line up for the same sensation at an amusement park. And I was doing it in bed, in pajamas.)

And there were mirrors. I started the journey apparently healthy. Walking into the hospital for the brain surgery, recovering for a few days at home walking well with the walker.

Then, “the unpleasantness” – I nearly die and now I’m barely functioning. (For all my denial.) Now who is this person in the mirror? The drugs and IVs ballooned me – I could be in a parade! My face looked like a moon. My hands were so swollen the skin was shiny; they looked like baseball mitts. My feet were like footballs. I sometimes wonder what I weighed. It’s better I don’t know.

And so, on the 28^th, whacked on more drugs than could possibly be good for you (but were keeping me alive), it was time to confront the rehab gym.

The first steps were using parallel bars, with therapist fore and aft, wearing a fashion accessory known as the “gait belt”. For those who haven’t encountered this, it’s a heavy, woven cotton belt that essentially puts a handle on you for the therapists to grab.

For me, it went between swollen breasts and distended stomach, north of the feeding tube. Properly cinched, you are encouraged to begin your life of mobility all over again.

There is a reason, I think, why learning to crawl and walk are done before you are really going to remember the experience. (In the normal course of things.)

Babies and toddlers don’t even particularly enjoy this phase of life. Endless frustration – stand up, take a few steps, get tired, plop down, do it again and again. And they cry.

As an adult, the only way to manage this (without losing your mind or make everyone hate you) is to profess to love it even though you are lying. You want to cry. But then the magic happens. You do love it. I craved physical therapy.

I was probably unbearable to be around. I would work and work, then make everyone tell me how well I was doing. I wasn’t really satisfied unless I could wring fulsome praise from everyone around me.

“Look at me!” “Tell me I’m the best you’ve ever seen!” Which was really, “Tell me I’m alive, that this won’t last forever….that I didn’t die…that I don’t have to be this scared!”